Giveaway! The Cold Eye by Laura Anne Gilman

The Cold Eye is the second book in the Devil's West trilogy and it was fantastic. The trade paperback has just been released and the author is giving away a copy to a US reader. But there's a twist! Laura Anne wanted to do something a little different so I came up with what I hope I will be something fun.

To enter, you will need to have read either The Cold Eye or the first book, Silver on the Road. Why? Well, in order to enter, you will need to write a poem, any style, or song lyrics inspired by or based on one of the books or the series so far. Pick a character, an event, an image, anything from the books that appeals or calls to you. Nor do you need to write something long, it can be short. Now, the winning entry will NOT be judged on quality. Have fun with this, don't stress. I'll use random.org to pick the winning entry. Put your work in the comments below and leave a way for me to contact you if you win.

The giveaway ends March 28th at 11:59PM Eastern time. US only. No purchase necessary. VOID where prohibited. Please read my Giveaway Policy and Privacy Policy. The winning comment will be chosen by random.org.

Go wild! Have fun!

Blurb ~

In the anticipated sequel to Silver on the Road, Isobel is riding circuit through the Territory as the Devil's Left Hand. But when she responds to a natural disaster, she learns the limits of her power and the growing danger of something mysterious that is threatening not just her life, but the whole Territory.

Isobel is the left hand of the old man of the Territory, the Boss—better known as the Devil. Along with her mentor, Gabriel, she is traveling circuit through Flood to represent the power of the Devil and uphold the agreement he made with the people to protect them. Here in the Territory, magic exists—sometimes wild and perilous.

But there is a growing danger in the bones of the land that is killing livestock, threatening souls, and weakening the power of magic. In the next installment of the Devil’s West series, Isobel and Gabriel are in over their heads as they find what’s happening and try to stop the people behind it before it unravels the Territory.

Bea Reviews Stranded with the Mountain Man by Aislinn Kearns

Publisher: Aislinn Kearns
Source: the author in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: March 22nd, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Aislinn Kearns | Goodreads
* affiliate link; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through this link.

Blurb from goodreads:

Gia’s on the run…

Elijah lives a simple life on his mountain until he saves an injured woman from a crashed plane. He can’t abandon a woman in need, and soon will do whatever it takes to protect Gia, even if it costs him everything.

Gia is desperate and afraid. But when the kind—and sexy—mountain man takes her to his cabin, she thinks she might have finally found a safe place to hide. At least until she has to run again.

As Gia heals, she learns to love Elijah’s way of life, and maybe even Elijah himself. But her enemy is closer than she thinks, and he’ll stop at nothing to see her punished.

Pitted against a ruthless enemy and the wilderness itself, will Gia and Elijah survive to find their happily ever after?

Bea Reviews Me and My Cars by Liesbet Slegers

Publisher: Clavis Publishing
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: April 1st, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository*  | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Toot-toot! Cars are everywhere. Some drive super-fast, others are very big, some transport things and others have a siren. Which cars do you recognize? A book filled with recognizable illustrations of the many vehicles around us. For toddlers ages 12 months and up, with a focus on the child’s world.

Excerpt & Giveaway: Every Deep Desire by Sharon Wray

Sharon Wray is a librarian/archivist who studied dress design in the couture houses of Paris and now writes stories of adventure, suspense, and love. She’s a three-time Daphne du Maurier® winner and an eight-time RWA Golden Heart® Finalist. She lives with her super-hero husband and teenage twins in Northern Virginia.

Bea Reviews Every Deep Desire by Sharon Wray

Series: Deadly Force #1 
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: March 6th, 2018
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble |
Books-A-Million | Book Depository*  | Chapters |  iBooks* |
Indiebound | Kobo | * affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

He's taking it all back
His honor, his freedom, and the woman he loves

Rafe Montfort was a decorated Green Beret, the best of the best, until a disastrous mission and an unforgivable betrayal destroyed his life. Now, this deadly soldier has returned to the sultry Georgia swamps to reunite with his brothers, and take back all he lost. But Juliet must never know the truth behind what he's done...or the dangerous secret that threatens to take him from her forever.

It took Juliet Capel eight long years to put her life back together after her husband was taken from her. Now Rafe is back, determined to protect her at any cost, and it's not just her heart that's in danger. The swamps hold a secret long buried and far deadlier than either of them could have imagined..

February Reading Challenge Wrap Up

This year I'm participating in 5 year-long challenges, and may do some short-term challenges throughout the year. Let's see how I did and you can share your accomplishments in the comments.

February Balancing the Books

Inspired by the now defunct Fantasy Is More Fun and by The Geeky Blogger's Book Blog, I decided a few years ago to track my book expenses. I'll do a wrap up post at the end of each month.

I've given myself $10 real money each month to spend on books, whether for myself or as gifts, and blog giveaways. "Real money" being cash from my bank account as opposed to gift cards and store credits. Books that I borrowed from the library or a friend, and books received for review do not count against my purchases though I'll track them here as books acquired.

Group Review of Astronaut Annie by Suzanne Slade, Illustrated by Nicole Tadgell

Publisher: Tilbury House Publishers
Source: publicist in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: March 6th, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository*  | iBooks* |
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

Career Day is approaching, and Annie can’t wait to show her family what she’s planning to be when she grows up. But, she must keep it a secret until Friday! So curious family members each ask Annie for a clue. Convinced that she’ll be a news reporter like he once was, Grandpop gives her his old camera and notebook to use for her presentation. Grandma is sure Annie wants to be a champion baker like her, so she offers a mixing bowl and oven mitts to Annie. Hopeful she'll become the mountain climber he aspired to be, Dad gives Annie an old backpack. Mom presents Annie with a pair of high-top sneakers to pursue Mom's favorite sport in high school -- basketball.


Grateful for each gift, Annie cleverly finds a way to use them all to create her Career Day costume. When the big day arrives, Annie finally reveals her out-of-this-world dream to everyone.

Review, Excerpt & Giveaway of Seeking Mr. Wrong by Tamara Morgan

Series: Penelope Blue #3
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: March 6th, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository*  | iBooks* | * affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

A fool-proof way to spice up any relationship:
1. Infiltrate a deadly ring of thieves, cons, and crooks.
2. Try to escape with your lives.

Penelope Blue used to be one of the best jewel thieves in New York City―but that was before falling in love with FBI poster boy Grant Emerson. Now she works at his side, helping her former enemy catch her past-life colleagues, and she couldn't be happier.

If only Grant would remember to play by the rules.

Now he's gone undercover on a cruise ship full of hardened criminals. To keep him safe, Penelope must pretend they're nothing but strangers...while searching for an information broker desperately wanted by the FBI. While doing her darndest not to backslide and steal 20 million dollars' worth of diamonds from beneath the noses of the criminal elite. It's all Penelope can do to keep this mission afloat...

Good thing this cat burglar has plenty of lives to spare.

Review, Excerpt & Giveaway: The Sometimes Sisters by Carolyn Brown

Publisher: Montlake Romance
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: February 27th, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository*  |
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

A bittersweet inheritance reunites three estranged sisters in a novel of family, trust, and forgiveness from New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.

When they were growing up, Dana, Harper, and Tawny thought of themselves as “sometimes sisters.” They connected only during the summer month they’d all spend at their grandmother’s rustic lakeside resort in north Texas. But secrets started building, and ten years have passed since they’ve all been together—in fact, they’ve rarely spoken, and it broke their grandmother’s heart.

Now she’s gone, leaving Annie’s Place to her granddaughters—twelve cabins, a small house, a café, a convenience store, and a lot of family memories. It’s where Dana, Harper, and Tawny once shared so many good times. They’ve returned, sharing only hidden regrets, a guarded mistrust, and haunting guilt. But now, in this healing summer place, the secrets that once drove them apart could bring them back together—especially when they discover that their grandmother may have been hiding something, too…

To overcome the past and find future happiness, these “sometimes sisters” have one more chance to realize they are always family.

Bea Reviews Meet My Family! Animal Babies and Their Families by Laura Purdie Salas & Illustrated by Stephanie Fizer Coleman

Publisher: Millbrook Press
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: March 1st 2018
Buying Links: Amazon* | Book Depository*  | Barnes & Noble
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

What kind of families do animal babies have? All different kinds! Charming text and sweet illustrations introduce a wolf pup cared for by the pack, a young orangutan snuggling with its mother high in a tree, a poison dart frog tadpole riding piggyback on its dad, and more. Featuring rhyming verse and informational text, this book lets you discover just how diverse the animal kingdom really is!

WIN A Signed Paperback of STORM CROSSED by Dani Harper!

Last month Steph and I reviewed Storm Crossed, the newest novel in Dani Harper's PNR Grim series. We both enjoyed it and you can check out our review here. Today Dani is giving away three signed paperbacks of Storm Crossed and a surprise bookbag to put it in!

Bea Reviews The Myth Manifestation by Lisa Shearin

Series: The SPI Files #5
Publisher: NLA Digital LLC
Source: the author in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: January 16th, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository*  | Google | iBooks* | Kobo
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

The agents of Supernatural Protection & Investigations (SPI) protect people from predatory supernaturals. This time, we’re the ones who need protection.  

New York is one of the most popular convention destinations in the world—for humans and supernaturals. Every hundred years, rulers of the world’s supernatural races come together to negotiate and renew a peace treaty. Meeting in the same hotel are the governors of our world’s goblin and elf colonies. SPI is saddled with the security nightmare of keeping the living delegates alive and the undead delegates from becoming permanently deceased. We’ve got our work cut out for us.

I’m Makenna Fraser, seer for SPI. Our security nightmare becomes real when monsters from the delegates’ mythologies begin mysteriously appearing in the flesh to hunt delegates from every side of the debate. And when the hotel gets sucked into another dimension, there’s no escape.

We discover that we’re all pieces in an elaborate and deadly game. A game about to spill out into the real world. Failing to escape is game over and not an option. We have to save the world—but first, we have to save ourselves.

Bea Reviews The Lucky Ones by Tiffany Reisz

Publisher: HQ Digital
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: February 13th, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository*  | Google | iBooks* | Kobo
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

They called themselves “the lucky ones.” They were seven children either orphaned or abandoned by their parents and chosen by legendary philanthropist and brain surgeon Dr. Vincent Capello to live in The Dragon, his almost magical beach house on the Oregon Coast. Allison was the youngest of the lucky ones living an idyllic life with her newfound family…until the night she almost died, and was then whisked away from the house and her adopted family forever.

Now, thirteen years later, Allison receives a letter from Roland, Dr. Capello’s oldest son, warning her that their father is ill and in his final days. Allison determines she must go home again and confront the ghosts of her past. She's determined to find out what really happened that fateful night--was it an accident or, as she's always suspected, did one of her beloved family members try to kill her?

But digging into the past can reveal horrific truths, and when Allison pieces together the story of her life, she'll learns the terrible secret at the heart of the family she once loved but never really knew.

A vivid and suspenseful tale of family, grief, love—and the dark secrets that bind everything together—Tiffany Reisz’s latest is enthralling to the final page.

Bea Reviews This Fallen Prey by Kelley Armstrong

Series: Rockton #3
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: February 6th, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository*  | iBooks* | IndieBound | Kobo |
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

When Casey Duncan first arrived at Rockton, the off-the-grid, isolated community built as a haven for people running from their pasts, she had no idea what to expect. There are no cell phones, no internet, no mail, and no way of getting in or out without the town council's approval. She certainly didn't expect to become the town homicide detective. But, the very last thing she expected was for the council to drop a dangerous criminal into their midst without a plan to keep him imprisoned. And she never thought that she'd have to be responsible for him.

The longer Oliver Brady stays in town, the more people seem to die around him. When evidence begins piling up that someone inside Rockton is working as his accomplice, Casey races to figure out who exactly Brady is and what crimes he's truly responsible for committing.

Bea Reviews Murder on a Midsummer Night by Kerry Greenwood

Series: Phryne Fisher #17
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: February 6th, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository*  | iBooks* |
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

The Hon. Phryne Fisher, languid and slightly bored at the start of 1929, has been engaged to find out if the antique-shop-owning son of a Pre-Raphaelite model has died by homicide or suicide. He had some strange friends - a Balkan adventuress, a dilettante with a penchant for antiquities, a Classics professor, a medium, and a mysterious supplier who arrives after dark on a motorbike. Simultaneously, she is asked to discover the fate of the lost illegitimate child of a rich old lady, to the evident dislike of the remaining relatives.

With the help of her sister Beth, the cab drivers Bert and Cec, and even her two adoptive daughters, Phryne follows eerie leads that bring her face-to-face with the conquest of Jerusalem by General Allenby and the Australian Light Horse, kif smokers, spirit guides, pirate treasure maps, and ghosts.

Bea Reviews Twist of Faith by Ellen J. Green

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Source: the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Release Date: February 1st, 2018 
Buying Links: Amazon* | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository*  |
* affiliate links; the blog receives a small commission from purchases made through these links.

Blurb from goodreads:

When family secrets are unearthed, a woman’s past can become a dangerous place to hide…

After the death of her adoptive mother, Ava Saunders comes upon a peculiar photograph, sealed and hidden away in a crawl space. The photo shows a shuttered, ramshackle house on top of a steep hill. On the back, a puzzling inscription: Destiny calls us.

Ava is certain that it’s a clue to her elusive past. Twenty-three years ago, she’d been found wrapped in a yellow blanket in the narthex of the Holy Saviour Catholic Church—and rescued—or so she’d been told. Her mother claimed there was no more to the story, so the questions of her abandonment were left unanswered. For Ava, now is the time to find the roots of her mother’s lies. It begins with the house itself—once the scene of a brutal double murder.

When Ava enlists the help of the two people closest to her, a police detective and her best friend, she fears that investigating her past could be a fatal mistake. Someone is following them there. And what’s been buried in Ava’s nightmares isn’t just a crime. It’s a holy conspiracy.

January Balancing the Books

Inspired by the now defunct Fantasy Is More Fun and by The Geeky Blogger's Book Blog, I decided a few years ago to track my book expenses. I'll do a wrap up post at the end of each month.

I've given myself $10 real money each month to spend on books, whether for myself or as gifts, and blog giveaways. "Real money" being cash from my bank account as opposed to gift cards and store credits. Books that I borrowed from the library or a friend, and books received for review do not count against my purchases though I'll track them here as books acquired.

January Reading Challenge Wrap Up

This year I'm participating in 5 year-long challenges, and may do some short-term challenges throughout the year. Let's see how I did, and you can share your progress in the comments.

Excerpt: Here Comes the Sun by Marie Force

Marie Force is the New York Times bestselling author of contemporary romance, including the indie-published Gansett Island Series and the Fatal Series from Harlequin Books. In addition, she is the author of the Butler, Vermont Series, the Green Mountain Series and the erotic romance Quantum Series. In 2019, her new historical Gilded series from Kensington Books will debut with Duchess By Deception.

All together, her books have sold 6.5 million copies worldwide, have been translated into more than a dozen languages and have appeared on the New York Times bestseller list many times. She is also a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller, a Speigel bestseller in Germany, a frequent speaker and publishing workshop presenter as well as a publisher through her Jack’s House Publishing romance imprint. She is a two-time nominee for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA® award for romance fiction.

Her goals in life are simple—to finish raising two happy, healthy, productive young adults, to keep writing books for as long as she possibly can and to never be on a flight that makes the news.